The Fallen

Their faces float across the screen
my eyes bouncing from left to right
as the names are being read aloud.
I’m sitting on the floor,
and usually when I’m watching TV
I slouch, I lay back,
but not this time.
For this forty minute broadcast
of the names and faces
of the fallen soldiers
who fought our latest war
I am compelled by gratitude,
frustration, and sorrow
to sit straight up,
stark and still
as the soldiers who stand at attention
and salute when the commander-in-chief walks by.

My body’s not used to it.
In fact, it prefers it’s late night slouch
but now is not the time for slouching.
Now is the time for sitting up straight
and paying attention to the roll call.
I sit cross-legged on the floor
and focus on their eyes as I listen.

Tom, Lori, Brian, Jose, Michael, Christine, Ahmed, Loretta, Frank, Joseph, Armando.

I search their faces for what I can see
watching big smiles in ceremonial dress and camouflage.
I try to imagine them at their best
and happy.
Mostly it works, but a few bloody poses
sneak into my head and I push my back
a little straighter.

When the names are done,
and all the faces gone by
I stand and salute.
I am a civilian, and I do it anyway.
Not for show or silly ritual,
but to say thanks
for putting the uniform on.
So others might not have to.


© 2004 Garland Lee Thompson Jr.

Read-A-Poem-Today

Read-A-Poem-Today
Originally uploaded by gtpoet.

guestmap

guestmap
Originally uploaded by gtpoet.

If anyone out there is actually reading this, and would like to do something very cool today for someone else, scroll down the page and click on the link on the right that says 'view my guest map' and leave me a note. It shows up as a colored pin on a map of the world. Take a moment if you can and drop a pin on the map today. Help me know the world I'm connected to. Peace.

How time flies...

Holy crap Batman! More than a week has gone by since the last post! Man, does time fly! Where does it go? For that matter where does it come from? Is it a straight line or some twisted mass like a bad large intestine on the Oprah show? Does it intersect reality in some way we can measure? Can we travel through it? These and other questions are being looked at by Quantum Mechanics everywhere, and some really believe we'll figure it out one day. As for me, it's the SPEED of Time that gets under my skin. Sometimes it's unbearably slow, inching along like molasses down the side of a jar. Sometimes it's unbearably fast and a moment is over before you've barely realized it's there, and you're in it. You know what I mean. Time flies when you're having fun, and all that. There was nothing to do, and the time just dragged on. Perception is a large part of it, and you can see it in these 2 axioms. Having fun, and having nothing to do (thus having NO fun) are essentially the same thing. Two states of being that affect our perception of time. Change these states, and you change your perception. The two are intrinsically linked. Then there are all the times we're on autopilot. Another way of dealing with our perception of time. As well as with everyday life, routine, and maybe mundane, things that need to be done but don't exactly tickle our short hairs. In essence, time marches on , and we find ourselves right in the middle of it. Like standing in the center of a stream or river, a little piece of us washed away every minute we stand in it. It's moving fast, moving slow. What's come to be known as ebb and flow. Breath it in, breath it out, expand and contract. With all the currents of time of time flowing around and past us. Picking us up and taking us for a ride, even as it takes us a little at a time. The ride is sometimes smooth, sometimes bumpy, but a ride nonetheless. If you're lucky enough to have seatbelts, you better buckle up. It's bound to be the ride of your life! Meanwhile, simultaneously, every day we trudge to the factory floor or the big box store, the office cubicle or the 7-11 parking lot, chanting 'If you got the dime, then I got the time. If you got the dime, I got the time.' The same line that every man, woman and child will say many times in their lives. It's the chant that dictates lives, and whole cultures even. A simple line taught to children as a nursery rhyme they whisper to their own children generation after generation. With worldwide consequence. Time and civilization march on, yet it always seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same. If you got the dime, I got the time. I got the time if you got the dime. A chant of Man since the beginning of time. Or at least recorded history. Who knows what life was like before? I wonder, can anybody tell me what life was like before?

Monday, monday...

Here it is, Monday evening in Monterey. I'm sitting at a local coffeehouse surrounded by college students studying. The people to the right of me must be studying law because I hear them discussing motive, self defense pleas, and what constitutes stress. There's a couple of japanese girls to my left, and their stream of conversation has been non-stop since I sat down. No doubt since before I sat down. I've got a cd of my sister and her husband interviewing her in Grand Central Station, NYC. I put my headphones on and started to listen to it. Immediately I was engrossed. Sucked in like a black hole. I listened to a minute or two of it, then decided to stop and write this blog entry. I want to listen to it when I'm at home with no distractions where I can put it on in my studio, and really get into it. So now I've got a funky bunch of sounds coming my way via the internet. Adding to the rest of the sounds leaking into my ears. Music from the cafe, people talking, upstairs and downstairs. I've got funk in my ears and there's jazz coming from the house speakers. I'm nearly done with my mocha, whose end will signal the time for me to head back to the barn. Every minute brings more students climbing the stairs looking for someplace to park themselves and their laptops. Nine out of ten students I see here have one. Mostly PC's, but one or two Apples, including mine. The wireless internet works great here, and best of all it's free! Now if they just add some more tables...

You've just vicariously, through literary device, experienced shades of a few moments in my life. I hope it helps. We now return you to your own previously scheduled existence. Thanks for stopping by.

Monday, monday...

Poetry to the People!

The Road to Hell...
Originally uploaded by gtpoet.

In honor of National Poetry Month, a brand new poem, untitled and, as of this writing, only read once in public. Dig it:


Her feet leave
walking down the street
up the block
around the corner
She is breathing and walking
past trees past cars
people, dogs, front porches
apartment buildings, Palm trees
italian jewelry stores on a street faraway called Delancey
Her feet dip and step as the world rotates
beneath her 1000 mph
knees bending her to the beat
she hears in her head
that Afro pulse latin groovalicious
funkadelic dichotomy of rhythm
pulsing through air,
virtual and real
She is LCD'd and DVD'd
listening to the MP3 of her future voice
i-podding itself into being right now
She is going beyond Brittany
in a jitney filled with people
going her way and
there are flashes in the pan
stashes for the band
two birds in the hand
migrant workers tending the land
while politician gangsters
run their scams -
Still she is steppin' on
flowing like the Hoover Dam
always lyrical
sharp and quizzical
a kind of nitro-dizzical
dancer
who won't take
no for an answer
to the question
she is asking
though she knows
change ain't for those basking
in the limelight
of their own sun
and the Father, Son, the Holy Ghost
are the prayed to Gods
people pray to most
she whispers to herself
as she makes a silent toast
to the gravel voiced cat
in the Army green coat
who says to the counter man
with suspicious eyes,
"Can I get four dollars and
four quarters - change for this five"
maybe he's thinkin' to himself
I'm just tryin' to stay alive
when he says to her
" 'scuse me€,
I'm a government employee,
and Green Berets always
sleep good at night."€
Then he smiles at her and
takes a hard right
into the rainy gray
monday morning light

and she steps on
the world rotating
a thousand miles per hour
beneath her feet.



©2005 GLT Jr. March 21, 2005

John Paul takes his final curtain...

Karol Jozef Wojtyla
Originally uploaded by gtpoet.

John Paul II, the Pope of Rome, the Holy Father, has moved on. He's left the building. He's gone.

On Saturday night, April 2, 2005, Pope John Paul II finally met his maker.

Fitting for a man of his great, public stature there is definitely no shortage of real, or cyber, ink on him, and his life. All the more so since his health had been declining steadily in recent months. Still, I'm drawn to my keyboard, kind of like a moth drawn to a light. While I am not a practicing, fallen, guilty, or any other, kind of catholic, I can recognize a man who was beloved by millions, feared by dictators, and duly elected officials alike.

Snapshot 1987: The Pope was touring Los Angeles, complete with a rock star entourage, and security detail that included at least four U.S. Army helicopters watching his every move from the sky. I was working as a carpenter for the Los Angeles Festival at Raleigh Studios on Melrose Avenue. Looking up one day as I stood outside Studio 14, I saw the Army choppers flying above my head, and remembered a recent news report that stated the cost of a Papal hat (the tall one they wear) was $10,000, and I thought to myself "Sell the hat, and feed the poor!" At the time I thought the Pope, and most leading practitioners of Catholicism, were hypocrites. To my ear they preached about the goodness of helping the downtrodden among us, even as they laid high moral decrees on struggling people from the backs of limousines. Living the high life, spending millions of dollars on hats, rings, and any other damn thing they pleased to have. Not to mention all the money our city, state, and federal governments were spending on security, and rolling out the red carpet for his visit. This was the time of 'Gordon Gecko', the fictional lizard of Wall Street, and tele-e-jackass Jim Bakker, when greed was good, and I felt the whole thing was overblown. I was annoyed that so much time, attention, and money was being paid to a man whose moral authority was ambiguous to me at best, and whose organization was highly suspect with a checkered past. Remember, in 1987 this was still the same church that had run the Inquisition, called Galileo a heretic for believing the Earth revolved around the Sun, and eventually convicted him as such placing him under house arrest until the end of his life. While thinking about it I even flirted with the idea of making a big sign that said: 'Sell the hat, and feed the poor!", and going to protest the Pope's visit as he rode around my hometown like a self appointed king.

I never made the sign. I went back to work, and blew the whole thing off.

Years later, I know the situation was never that black and white, and I still vehemently disagree with many of his views, and statements. As for the hat, it's probably just one of those things that comes with the territory. Like the Pope-mobile with it's bullet-proof glass box John Paul would sit in as he was driven around city after city. I've often wondered what's locked in the basement of the Vatican, hidden from prying eyes, maybe even from the Pope himself. Today, I think about a young Karol Jozef Wojtyla (Vo-TEE-Wah) studying in Poland at university, pursuing his love for Poetry, Literature, and Theatre with an experimental theatre group in 1938. Participating in poetry readings, and literary discussions. I think about this, and I can't help but smile as I read in CNN's special Pope report that "friends say he was an intense and gifted actor, and a fine singer." Through having the great priviledge myself to have grown up surrounded by gifted actors, directors, poets, playwrights, producers, designers, and stagehands, the Theatre has been my church for as long as I can remember, and it's the one place I can honestly say I've spent most of my Sundays. Poetry is one of my greatest loves, a goddess muse who literally saved my life, and to whom I am eternally devoted to. Knowing of his love for Theatre, knowing of his love for Poetry, somehow allows me to feel kind of close to him. I don't necessarily agree with him, but I respect. In the play, AS YOU LIKE IT, Act 2, Scene 7, Shakespeare wrote this line for the character of Jaques de Boys:

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women, merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts..."

Both man, and Fate (God too if you believe in such things), conspired to produce the play that was Karol Wojtyla's vida loca. When, in 1978, the newly chosen headliner, Pope John Paul I, died suddenly a month into his run in Rome at the great papal theatre in Vatican City, the Broadway of the gospel circuit, auditions were held. After a brief deliberation, the talented Karol, already starring in Poland as the immensely popular Archbishop of Krakow, was given a callback, and cast in the greatest part he would ever play, Pope John Paul II. Beloved by millions, feared by dictators, and duly elected officials alike. In this role of a lifetime he got good reviews, he got bad reviews, he caused a buzz, made women swoon, and freed his nation from a corrupt, Communist choke-hold. He made people laugh, and smile, never missed a show, and he was never out of work.

Which is more than most actors could ever hope for.

Keeping Time with the Revolution

Mere moments ago I joined one of the latest efforts to keep the world 'virtually' safe from the squares out there who would have us all on lockdown in nice little boxes where they can easily monitor our 'progress' (or dissent). It's Ourmedia.org, and from all accounts it is a cool spot on the net. The people who put it together are all net pioneers, and very into keeping the flow of information free, and available, to anyone who wants to use, or build upon it. So, I'm in the mix! Check it out!

Doin' tha Beat thang

Am in San Francisco for the weekend chasing cool with Dr. Audrey Sprenger, and her flock of young hipsters from the University of Denver. Bill Morgan, friend of Allen Ginsberg, and creator of some wonderful books on the Beats hangouts in NY & SF, is here, as well as Jerry Cimino a.k.a. Prof. Jerry, the Beat Scholar, and we're awaiting the arrival of Mr. Fabulous himself, David Amram as he jets in from the East coast just to hang out with us. There's all sorts of crazy talk about what we're doing from a walking tour of North Beach (part of the course), to jazz to a memorial for the late Philip Lamantia, the great surrealist poet to hanging out with more Beat legends. More later friends. Onward ho!

I need to rant!

First though, on the 1 year anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, my heart, and good wishes, go out to the people of Spain for their terrible loss of life, and limb, on that tragic Spring day. I mourn, celebrate, and look to the future with them.

And now it's time for a 30 second rant:

I am sooooooo sick and tired of hearing the utter crap that is getting repeated at nearly every turn in America today: "We are spreading Democracy across the world." Democracy across the world? What about Democracy here at home? America gets hit by terrorists, and one of the first things that happens (for our safety - yeah right!) is the limiting of our democratic freedoms through the Patriot Act, a bill rushed thru Congress, and passed into law with little to no debate on it's necessity, or possible effectiveness. Then came the Department of Homeland Security, their color-coded threat levels, and daily press briefings. To this day, politicians, and neocon mouthpieces continue to stare into CNN's cameras fanning the flames of paranoia with their constant reiteration that "they" are out to get us, "they" are lurking around every corner, and we must not hesitate to respond. Thus we must give up our freedoms in order to save them. Huh? Sounds like George Orwell's "NewSpeak"*, doesn't it? Meanwhile, a tragedy of similar proportions happens in Spain on March 11, 2004. What happens there? Do the Spanish people get a Spanish patriot act, and a huge, new beauracracy scrutinizing them? Does a wave of hysterical predictions repeated endlessly in the mass media get foisted on the people of Spain? Are there mass arrests of innocent, law-abiding, persons in a crackdown that ultimately puts people on edge for little, or no reason? The answer in a word:

NO.

In fact, the Spanish People responded to the attacks of March 11 by first tending to their wounded, and dead, and second, by demanding the truth from the government about what they knew, and who they were investigating. Here's how the Spanish government responded:

The conservative government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar immediately blamed the Basque separatist group ETA for the train bombings. National elections were three days away, and Prime Minister Aznar's government strongly opposed the group. But a day before the elections, a videotape was found near a Madrid Mosque. It announced that al-Qaida had attacked the trains to punish Spain for sending troops to Iraq. - Jeffrey Young, Voice of America March 11, 2005

Here's how the Spanish people responded in their National election 3 days later:

The combination of Spanish public opposition to the war in Iraq and the perception that the government had manipulated public opinion led to Prime Minister Aznar's defeat. - Jeffrey Young, Voice of America March 11, 2005

There you have it America. The definition of accountability demonstrated for all the world to see. You don't tell the truth, you intentionally mislead the people, and you lose your job, you don't pass go, you don't collect 200+ million dollars. Jose Aznar's government fell like a house of cards in a hurricane because they did just that, and the first thing the new government did was change the foreign policy, and pull all the Spanish troops out of Iraq. Of course there were, and are, people on the right in Spain who disagreed with this course of action, but it appears the vast majority of Spaniards were all for it.

Quote: I have seen the promised land...and I know we as a people we will get there one day. **

I only hope, for us here in America, the sake of Humanity, and our planet, that it's sooner than later.

End of rant.


*From "1984" by George Orwell
** Martin Luther King, Jr.

RAdioDogg...a blog for right now

Welcome to RadioDogg, a blog for now...